Energy, history, and the humanities: against a new determinism

Abstract

The study of past 'energy transitions' are being reinterpreted as possible guides to a low-carbon future. But little is known about the historians who shaped how we understand our transition into a predominantly hydrocarbon-based energy system. Before energy history emerged as a subfield, historians John Nef, Edward Wrigley, and Rolf Sieferle already explained the Industrial Revolution as a result of coal use. In unleashing industrialism, they argued that coal took on an historically decisive role. These notions of energy determinism will be the central concern of this paper. In revisiting their lives and work, it will be argued that in pursuit of a low-carbon future, we should not ignore the grave concerns posed by fossil energy use nor slip into a crude form of energy determinism.

Digitalization and the Anthropocene

“…Early industrialization relied on literacy and an expansive knowledge economy enabled by novel ICTs such as accounting and printing techniques, supporting further technological advances and the spread of technical literature (14,(18)(19)(20). While some scholars have argued that innovation was the key ingredient of the Industrial Revolution (21), environmental historians refute this argument, pointing to coal's energy density, its relation to colonial expansion, and its role in fueling recursive cycles of investment and the exploitation of labor (22)(23)(24)(25). Coal was uniquely positioned to break the "Malthusian deadlock" that constrained all kinds of growth before 1800, including that of knowledge (26).…”